


Follow Home

by rose_griffes



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Character of Color, Friendship, Gen, POV Minor Character, Pilots, finale fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-14
Updated: 2011-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_griffes/pseuds/rose_griffes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>one more mission together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow Home

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Lucky Charm](https://archiveofourown.org/works/158866) by [sabaceanbabe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaceanbabe/pseuds/sabaceanbabe). 



_Dei Kobol una apita uthoukarana. Help us, Lords of Kobol_

 _Their ship falls forever; they're gravity-bound in space._

\- - -

He doesn't remember falling; instead he realizes he's on the floor and Maggie's yelling at Connor while she presses against his shoulder; he can feel warm liquid trickling inside his flight suit. His blood.

Maggie mumbles after Connor leaves them--a mixture of profanity and prayers. He thinks, _Can't be too bad_ , because it doesn't really hurt; at least Maggie's still there with him.

\- - -

Everything is blurry. He blinks once, twice. It all hurts. A bullet--he remembers--in his shoulder and Maggie was trying to stop the bleeding. He doesn't hear her voice right now, just the beep of machines.  
\- - -

The next time Hamish opens his eyes, she's there. In her slender fingers she's holding something small: that damned bullet she always carries. "Hey," he says. He tries, anyway, but all that he can do is make a croaking noise.

Maggie turns her head, eyes big and round. Her relief is obvious.

"You--" she starts, hesitates. Starting again, she says, "You're one lucky frakker."

He tries to talk again; she says, "Hold on, I'm gonna see if you can have something to drink yet."

Who would have thought that a small piece of metal could make him so tired? He falls asleep again before she comes back.  
\- - -

"Thrace shot me," he says. It's hard to talk.

She nods her head. A wave of emotions washes over her face; he can't begin to decipher all of them.

"Gaeta?" he asks.

"Gonna be executed," she answers.

"Frak." If he could talk better, he would say a million things, but that word summed it all up.

"Yeah."

"And us?" He notices the military police now, two of them standing close to Maggie's chair.

"I don't know." She stares at her hands and keeps turning the bullet in her fingers.

He's too tired to stoke the flames of his anger from before. From the other side of sickbay he hears the grouchy voice of Doc Cottle, chewing somebody out.

Finally he tells her, "I didn't know you were so desperate for a souvenir from me."

She looks at him, confusion on her face.

"I could sign the bullet if you want."

It takes her a moment to process his words; when she does, she gives him a half-smile instead of her usual sharp reply. He thinks about explaining that it was a stupid joke, that he knew the bullet wasn't his. But he couldn't stay awake long enough to do it. His last thought before falling asleep was that with no joke in reply, their situation was really that bad. _Frak._  
\- - -

The next time he wakes up, it was to see the MPs. They take him with the others to the _Astral Queen._ Maggie was already there.  
\- - -

He didn't know where it came from, her bullet; she had it before they started flying together. Lots of the pilots had them: mementos, lucky charms. Hamish had cleaned enough lockers and emptied the pockets from enough flight suits to expect anything from the obvious (photos) to the depressing (a lock of hair clipped together in a little girl's barrette) to the weird (half of a broken pair of swimming goggles).

Recuperating on a thin mattress in a cell aboard the _Astral Queen_ , he thinks about the junk that accumulates from everywhere they've stopped. Dried pieces of plants from the algae planet, a handful of dirt from New Caprica. He heard from Hoshi that Dualla had a radioactive toy in her locker that they found after her suicide--a morbid souvenir from Earth.

The objects don't fill the holes of everything else they've lost; nothing does. Not Maggie's prayers to the Lords of Kobol, not the photo of his niece that he kept inside his own flight jacket. She died on Gemenon with her mother, his little sister.

At least the few people they had left were here together. Him, Maggie, Seelix, Narcho, Redwing... No frakking cylons here, either.

\- - -

He gets better, in spite of the conditions on the _Astral Queen_. Hamish talks about what they should have done with the other pilots, with the military and the civilians brought together by having chosen the losing side.

Maggie doesn't talk about it. She doesn't say it, but he knows she has regrets. He doesn't want to hear them. It's the first real rift in a friendship that has made it through more deaths and fighting than they ever expected to see.

Narcho tells him about Gaeta's death. Zarek's too: executed by firing squad. They rehash all of it, but mostly they have the same conversations they had a thousand times in the pilots' rec room.

Time passes, every day almost the same as the one before. It's like drifting in space on an unending CAP, watching for something that never comes. Same company, even.

\- - -

Never thought he'd see the flight deck of _Galactica_ again. Admiral Adama came to the _Astral Queen_ asking for volunteers on a suicide mission and Maggie did it. She stepped forward, snapped to attention and said, "Lieutenant Margaret Edmondson, reporting for duty, sir."

Narcho was disbelieving. Hamish looked at Maggie, nodded and _frak it_ , he took that step too. Not for the Old Man, not because he wanted forgiveness, not really for Helo. Maybe for Hera, a little, but mostly because Skulls was Racetrack's ECO and if she was going, he was too.

They didn't get to pilot the raptor that took them back to the Bucket.

The Old Man gives another speech there and Hamish thinks, _Didn't miss these_ , but he and Maggie step across the line, her two steps to his one as they weave between the other people to go to the starboard side.

It makes him think of the lines drawn with salt, of the scrolls and Maggie reading prayers for reunion before other missions.

\- - -

Racetrack and Skulls, flying recon again. It's familiar and great--what he'd given up hope on experiencing again. Maggie jumps them to the coordinates, and _frak._

"Figures that brain-damaged cylon would send us hunting in the middle of an asteroid field," Maggie says.

"The more things change, the more they stay the same," he answers. "Hey, got a recon mission where someone needs to hang their ass over the edge and wait for a bite? Send Racetrack and Skulls."

"Beats sitting in a cell," she replies. The rhythms of raptor conversation fall back into place without effort.

Then he sees the black hole. It gets worse from there. They report back what they found: the Colony is in orbit on the edge of a singularity. Only one way in or out.

They are so frakked, but Gods, it's good to be flying again with Racetrack, talking without worrying about the things they won't say. It hasn't been like this since before the mutiny.

Helo leads yet another briefing. Skulls tries not to look at _her_ leaning in the doorway, her eyes tear-filled. Helo's an okay guy. Since the mutiny, though... Hamish tries to remember all that Athena has done as a pilot with the Colonial fleet, but all he can see is another cylon. For a moment he fels ill, light-headed, and his heart starts to pound.

 _Hera's mom_ , he tells himself. Racetrack peeks at him from her seat a few rows away. He can do this. He takes a deep breath and nods at her. They'll be together, they'll be flying, he can do this.

\- - -

 _Help us, Lords of Kobol. We offer this prayer._

From the outside there's nothing to see. The black hole swallows everything, even the light.

Inside the singularity a ship falls; it was built in the shipyards of the planet Picon.

It holds a man, born on Gemenon. In his pockets he has a photo of a little girl with tight curls and a big smile. The woman in the seat next to him was born on Aquaria. Inside her pocket there's a bullet, once shot on Kobol, home of the Gods. It had missed its mark.

Her hand lies still on the weapons trigger as their ship continues its unending descent.

 _Their enemies will divide them. Yet still they will remain, always together._


End file.
